Both these high-quality mainboards have very well thought-through design, rich functionality and a very convenient BIOS with a complete set of overclocking and fine-tuning parameters. They have a lot in common, but each of them has its own unique peculiarities, too.

Proprietary Software Bundle

ASRock mainboards come bundled with a very extensive software suite. We could mention such goodies as a trial version of Cyberlink MediaEspresso 6.5, and a complete MAGIX Multimedia Suite. It includes “mufin player” audio player, Music Maker Silver program for audio editing a similar program for video editing called “Video easy SE”, and Photo Manager 10 for image editing. Today we are going to talk a little more about ASRock Extreme Tuning Utility (AXTU) – ASRock’s proprietary multi-functional utility for the company’s mainboards.

The startup screen is “Hardware Monitor”. It displays information about the system operational characteristics. The next tab called “Fan Control” allows adjusting the rotation speed of the processor and case fans.

Enabling power-saving in the “IES” (Intelligent Energy Saver) tab will lower the nominal processor Vcore by 0.07 V. however, you should really be careful, because it may in fact increase the power consumption. The thing is that we may also enable “Power Saving Mode” in the BIOS and it will lower the Vcore by 0.1 V. However, this tab will also prove that the dynamic adjustment of the number of active phases in the processor voltage regulator circuitry works even during overclocking.